Julia Keleher, director of the LGBTQA Office, plays a large role within the LGBTQA community. But Keleher is more than just a director, from adviser to parent to wife and now student — again — Keleher does a lot in her day-to-day.
Keleher self-identifies as a lesbian and came out in 2003, but feels this has been her identity for as long as she has understood herself.
Keleher has been a part of university inclusion programs for years. During both her graduate degrees at Minnesota State University, Mankato, she participated and later worked at Mankato’s LGBTQA Center.
As many graduate students had graduate assistantships at Mankato, Keleher was able to work with their LGBTQA center where she learned how to manage and run a center. When she graduated from Mankato with her second master’s degree, she did a national search for work within an LGBTQA center and was offered a job at UI in 2012.
At the time, UI’s LGBTQA office was a part of the Women’s Center. In 2013, the two offices split due to leadership changes in order to offer more visibility and support for the programs, so Keleher became the new LGBTQA office director.
“Doing this work is providing a vocal advocate and supporter for the students right away like instantly, I am that person,” Keleher said.
Advocacy work has been important to Keleher because she’s a member of a community where she did not always feel supported, and she wants to help students find that support. Keleher remembers a time when an instructor found out she was a lesbian and whispered it to her “like it was a private secret thing.”
“I don’t want my students to feel that way,” Keleher said. “Like we have to hide ourselves.”
To make sure LGBTQA students don’t feel themselves drifting, Keleher has done many things outside of her normal job description.
The LGBTQA Student Lounge was a big part of it.
One day Keleher found herself sitting in her office — which is now the LGBTQA Student Lounge — and noticed students would stay and spend time in her office.
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While Keleher enjoyed the community of the students, it wasn’t practical for students to always be in her office when she had to get work done.
“I wasn’t going to get a space for students like a center anytime soon,” Keleher said. “It’s just the fact of the matter. It’s not a positive or negative statement. Yeah, I understand that things move slowly. I am a minimally funded office, I get it.”
So Keleher took things into her own hands, and one day during the summer she and her wife took everything from her old office and move it into an office space in the Diversity Center — which was primarily used for storage and a workspace. Keleher and her wife took care of all the expenses and labor, but Keleher said she didn’t mind doing it.
Keleher’s wife has been the number one supporter of her office. When they renovated the lounge, Keleher and her wife got signs that said ‘Queer’ and ‘Trans’ and painted, sealed them and hung them up on their own time.
“We’re all adults, but there are LGBT gay people who are a little bit older who are in their (the students’) lives, maybe post college lives,” Keleher said. “And we care.”
Alex Brizee can be reached at [email protected]
Lorraine Dennis
I know it is still hard, but it is light-years better than when I was a student!